Integral Yoga Literature - By Sri Aurobindo

Selections from the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library

from Volume 18 and 19, The Life Divine

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:

The contents of this document are copyright 1972, Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Trust, Pondicherry, India. You may make a digital copy or printout of
this text for your personal, non-commercial use under the condition
that you copy this document without modifications and in its entirety,
including this copyright notice.

Book Two, Chapter Twenty-Four, "Man and the Evolution" (Part 1 of 3)

The one Godhead secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self
of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and
absolute... the One in control over the many who are passive to
Nature, fashions one seed in many ways.

Swetaswatara Upanishad VI. 11, 12.

The Godhead moves in this Field modifying each web of things separately in
many ways.... One, he presides over all wombs and natures; himself the womb
of all, he is that which brings to ripeness the nature of the being and he
gives to all who have to be matured their result of development and appoints
all qualities to their workings.

Swetaswatara Upanishad V. 3-5.

He fashions one form of things in many ways.

Katha Upanishad II. 2. 12.

Who has perceived this truth occult, that the Child gives being to
the Mothers by the workings of his nature? An offspring from the lap
of many Waters, he comes forth from them a seer possessed of his whole
law of nature. Manifested, he grows in the lap of their crookednesses
and becomes high, beautiful and glorious.

Rig Veda I. 95. 4, 5.

From the non-being to true being, from the darkness to the Light, from
death to Immortality.

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I. 3. 28.

A SPIRITUAL evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a
constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the
indwelling Spirit, is then the key-note, the central significant
motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at
the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a
dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of
insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which
works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force
of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself
inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence. The
obscure mysterious creatrix ends indeed by delivering the secret
consciousness out of its thick and tenebrous prison; but she delivers
it slowly, little by little, in minute infinitesimal drops, in
thin jets, in small vibrant concretions of energy and substance, of life,
of mind, as if that were all she could get out through the crass obstacle,
the dull reluctant medium of an inconscient stuff of existence. At first she
houses herself in forms of Matter which appear to be altogether unconscious,
then struggles towards mentality in the guise of living Matter and attains
to it imperfectly in the conscious animal. This consciousness is at first
rudimentary, mostly a half subconscious or just conscious instinct; it
develops slowly till in more organised forms of living Matter it reaches its
climax of intelligence and exceeds itself in Man, the thinking animal who
develops into the reasoning mental being but carries along with him even at
his highest elevation the mould of original animality, the dead weight of
subconscience of body, the downward pull of gravitation towards the original
Inertia and Nescience, the control of an inconscient material Nature over
his conscious evolution, its power for limitation, its law of difficult
development, its immense force for retardation and frustration. This control
by the original Inconscience over the consciousness emerging from it takes
the general shape of a mentality struggling towards knowledge but itself, in
what seems to be its fundamental nature, an Ignorance. Thus hampered and
burdened, mental man has still to evolve out of himself the fully conscious
being, a divine manhood or a spiritual and supramental supermanhood which
shall be the next product of the evolution. That transition will mark the
passage from the evolution in the Ignorance to a greater evolution in the
Knowledge, founded and proceeding in the light of the Superconscient and no
longer in the darkness of the Ignorance and Inconscience.

This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to
Mind and beyond it has a double process: there is an outward visible
process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery, -- for each
evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is
maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same
time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into
ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first
by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would
be a quickly perishing instrument, and the race, a more abiding
collective formulation, would be the real step in the progressive
manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth
is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of
the individual being in the earth-existence. Each grade of cosmic
manifestation, each type of form that can house the indwelling Spirit,
is turned by rebirth into a means for the individual soul, the psychic
entity, to manifest more and more of its concealed consciousness; each
life becomes a step in a victory over Matter by a greater progression
of consciousness in it which shall make eventually Matter itself a
means for the full manifestation of the Spirit.

But this account of the process and meaning of the terrestrial
creation is at every point exposed to challenge in the mind of man
himself, because the evolution is still half-way on its journey, is
still in the Ignorance, is still seeking in the mind of a half-evolved
humanity for its own purpose and significance. It is possible to
challenge the theory of evolution on the ground that it is
insufficiently founded and that it is superfluous as an explanation of
the process of terrestrial existence. It is open to doubt, even if
evolution is granted, whether man has the capacity to develop into a
higher evolutionary being. It is open also to doubt whether the
evolution is likely to go any farther than it has gone already or
whether a supramental evolution, the appearance of a consummated
Truth-Consciousness, a being of Knowledge, is at all probable in the
fundamental Ignorance of the earthly Nature. Another construction
neither teleological nor evolutionary can be put on the workings of
the Spirit in the manifestation here, and it may be as well before
proceeding farther to formulate succinctly the line of thinking which
makes such a construction possible.

Admitting that the creation is a manifestation of the Timeless
Eternal in a Time Eternity, admitting that there are the seven grades
of Consciousness and that the material Inconscience has been laid down
as a basis for the reascent of the Spirit, admitting that rebirth is a
fact, a part of the terrestrial order, still a spiritual evolution of
the individual being is not an inevitable consequence of any of these
admissions or even of all of them together. It is possible to take
another view of the spiritual significance and the inner process of
terrestrial existence. If each thing created is a form of the manifest
Divine Existence, each is divine in itself by the spiritual presence
within it, whatever its appearance, its figure or character in
Nature. In each form of manifestation the Divine takes the delight of
existence and there is no need of change or progress within it.
Whatever ordered display or hierarchy of actualised possibilities is
necessitated by the nature of the Infinite Being, is sufficiently
provided for by the numberless variation, the teeming multitude of
forms, types of consciousness, natures that we see everywhere around
us. There is no teleological purpose in creation and there cannot be,
for all is there in the Infinite: the Divine has nothing that he needs
to gain or that he has not; if there is creation and manifestation, it
is for the delight of creation, of manifestation, not for any
purpose. There is then no reason for an evolutionary movement with a
culmination to be reached or an aim to be worked out and effectuated
or a drive towards ultimate perfection.

In fact we see that the principles of creation are permanent and
unchanging: each type of being remains itself and does not try nor has
any need to become other than itself; granting that some types of
existence disappear and others come into being, it is because the
Consciousness-Force in the universe withdraws its life-delight from
those that perish and turns to create others for its pleasure. But
each type of life, while it lasts, has its own pattern and remains
faithful with whatever minor variations to that pattern: it is bound
to its own consciousness and cannot get away from it into
other-consciousness; limited by its own nature, it cannot transgress
these boundaries and pass into other-nature. If the
Consciousness-Force of the Infinite has manifested Life after
manifesting Matter and Mind after manifesting Life, it does not follow
that it will proceed to manifest Supermind as the next terrestrial
creation. For Mind and Supermind belong to quite different
hemispheres, Mind to the lower status of the Ignorance, Supermind to
the higher status of the Divine Knowledge. This world is a world of
the Ignorance and intended to be that only; there need be no intention
to bring down the powers of the higher hemisphere into the lower half
of existence or to manifest their concealed presence there; for, if
they are at all existent here, it is in an occult incommunicable
immanence and only to maintain the creation, not to perfect it. Man is
the summit of this ignorant creation; he has reached the utmost
consciousness and knowledge of which it is capable: if he tries to go
farther, he will only revolve in larger cycles of his own
mentality. For that is the curve of his existence here, a finite
circling which carries the Mind in its revolutions and returns always
to the point from which it started; Mind cannot go outside its own
cycle, -- all idea of a straight line of movement or of progress
reaching infinitely upward or sidewise into the Infinite is a
delusion. If the soul of man is to go beyond humanity, to reach either
a supramental or a still higher status, it must pass out of this
cosmic existence, either to a plane or world of Bliss and Knowledge or
into the unmanifest Eternal and Infinite.

It is true that Science now affirms an evolutionary terrestrial
existence: but if the facts with which Science deals are reliable, the
generalisations it hazards are short-lived; it holds them for some
decades or some centuries, then passes to another generalisation,
another theory of things. This happens even in physical Science where
the facts are solidly ascertainable and verifiable by experiment: in
psychology, -- which is relevant here, for the evolution of
consciousness comes into the picture, -- its instability is still
greater; it passes there from one theory to another before the first
is well-founded; indeed, several conflicting theories hold the field
together. No firm metaphysical building can be erected upon these
shifting quicksands. Heredity, upon which Science builds its concept
of life-evolution, is certainly a power, a machinery for keeping a
type of species in unchanged being: the demonstration that it is also
an instrument for persistent and progressive variation is very
questionable; its tendency is conservative rather than evolutionary,
-- it seems to accept with difficulty the new character that the
Life-Force attempts to force upon it. All the facts show that a type
can vary within its own specification of nature, but there is nothing
to show that it can go beyond it. It has not yet been really
established that ape-kind developed into man; for it would rather seem
that a type resembling the ape, but always characteristic of itself
and not of apehood, developed within its own tendencies of nature and
became what we know as man, the present human being. It is not even
established that inferior races of man developed out of themselves the
superior races; those of an inferior organisation and capacity
perished, but it has not been shown that they left behind the human
races of today as their descendants: but still such a development
within the type is imaginable. The progress of Nature from Matter to
Life, from Life to Mind, may be conceded: but there is no proof yet
that Matter developed into Life or Life-energy into Mind-energy; all
that can be conceded is that Life has manifested in Matter, Mind in
living Matter. For there is no sufficient proof that any vegetable
species developed into an animal existence or that any organisation of
inanimate Matter developed into a living organism. Even if it be
discovered hereafter that under certain chemical or other conditions
Life makes its appearance, all that will be established by this
coincidence is that in certain physical circumstances Life manifests,
not that certain chemical conditions are constituents of Life, are its
elements or are the evolutionary cause of a transformation of
inanimate into animate Matter. Here as elsewhere each grade of being
exists in itself and by itself, is manifested according to its own
character by its own proper energy, and the gradations above or below
it are not origins and resultant sequences but only degrees in the
continuous scale of earth-nature.

If it be asked, how then did all these various gradations and
types of being come into existence, it can be answered that,
fundamentally, they were manifested in Matter by the
Consciousness-Force in it, by the power of the Real-Idea building its
own significant forms and types for the indwelling Spirit's cosmic
existence: the practical or physical method might vary considerably in
different grades or stages, although a basic similarity of line may be
visible; the creative Power might use not one but many processes or
set many forces to act together. In Matter the process is a creation
of infinitesimals charged with an immense energy, their association by
design and number, the manifestation of larger infinitesimals on that
primary basis, the grouping and association of these together to found
the appearance of sensible objects, earth, water, minerals, metals,
the whole material kingdom. In Life also the Consciousness-Force
begins with infinitesimal forms of vegetable life and infinitesimal
animalcules; it creates an original plasm and multiplies it, creates
the living cell as a unit, creates other kinds of minute biological
apparatus like the seed or the gene, uses always the same method of
grouping and association so as to build by a various operation various
living organisms. A constant creation of types is visible, but that is
no indubitable proof of evolution. The types are sometimes distant
from each other, sometimes closely similar, sometimes identical in
basis but different in detail; all are patterns, and such a variation
in patterns with an identical rudimentary basis for all is the sign of
a conscious Force playing with its own Idea and developing by it all
kinds of possibilities of creation. Animal species in coming into
birth may begin with a like rudimentary embryonic or fundamental
pattern for all, it may follow out up to a stage certain similarities
of development on some or all of its lines; there may too be species
that are twy-natured, amphibious, intermediate between one type and
another: but all this need not mean that the types developed one from
another in an evolutionary series. Other forces than hereditary
variation have been at work in bringing about the appearance of new
characteristics; there are physical forces such as food, light-rays
and others that we are only beginning to know, there are surely others
which we do not yet know; there are at work invisible life-forces and
obscure psychological forces. For these subtler powers have to be
admitted even in the physical evolutionary theory to account for
natural selection; if the occult or subconscious energy in some types
answers to the need of the environment, in others remains unresponsive
and unable to survive, this is clearly the sign of a varying
life-energy and psychology, of a consciousness and a force other than
the physical at work making for variation in Nature. The problem of
the method of operation is still too full of obscure and unknown
factors for any at present possible structure of theory to be
definitive.

Man is a type among many types so constructed, one pattern among
the multitude of patterns in the manifestation in Matter. He is the
most complex that has been created, the richest in content of
consciousness and the curious ingeniousness of his building; he is the
head of the earthly creation, but he does not exceed it. Even as
others, so he too has his own native law, limits, special kind of
existence, svabhava, svadharma; within those limits he
can extend and develop, but he cannot go outside them. If there is a
perfection to which he has to arrive, it must be a perfection in his
own kind, within his own law of being, -- the full play of it, but by
observation of its mode and measure, not by transcendence. To exceed
himself, to grow into the superman, to put on the nature and
capacities of a god would be a contradiction of his self-law,
impracticable and impossible. Each form and way of being has its own
appropriate way of the delight of being; to seek through the mind the
mastery and use and enjoyment of the environment of which he is
capable is rightly man the mental being's objective: but to look
beyond, to run after an ulterior object or aim of existence, to aspire
to surpass the mental stature is to bring in a teleological element
into existence which is not visible in the cosmic structure. If a
supramental being is to appear in the terrestrial creation, it must be
a new and independent manifestation; just as Life and Mind have
manifested in Matter, so Supermind must manifest there and the secret
Conscious-Energy must create the necessary patterns for this new grade
of its potencies. But there is no sign of any such intention in the
operations of Nature.

But if a superior creation is intended, then, certainly, it is not out
of man that the new grade, type or pattern can develop; for in that
case there would be some race or kind or make of human beings that has
already the material of the superman in it, just as the peculiar
animal being that developed into humanity had the essential elements
of human nature already potential or present in it: there is no such
race, kind or type, at most there are only spiritualised mental beings
who are seeking to escape out of the terrestrial creation. If by any
occult law of Nature such a human development of the supramental being
is intended, it could only be by a few in humanity detaching
themselves from the race so as to become a first foundation for this
new pattern of being. There is no reason to suppose that the whole
race could develop this perfection; it cannot be a possibility
generalised in the human creature.